California Public Land Sold to Frackers Despite Public Outcry

The US Bureau of Land Management continued its widespread sale of public land to the fracking and oil industry on Wednesday in a federal auction of nearly 18,000 acres. The auction was met by dozens of anti-fracking protesters who say the continual sale of public lands to the fossil fuel industry, including 800,000 acres of land in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming for tar sands and oil shale development, puts short-term profits ahead of the planet.

BLM spokesman David Christy said eight different groups—including oil companies—bid for the land Wednesday in Monterey, San Benito and Fresno counties. The agency plans to announce the "winners" within 24 hours.

“A fracking boom will devastate California’s beautiful public wildlands,” said Rose Braz, climate campaign director at the Center for Biological Diversity, who organized the protests along with several other groups. “The federal government should protect these beautiful public places, not sell them off to be drilled and fracked, risking irreparable harm to our air, water and climate.”

“Opening up thousands of acres of public land to oil and gas exploration would directly undercut our state's commitment to clean and renewable energy and endanger our already threatened water supply,” said Andrew Grinberg, program organizer at Clean Water Action. “We need to slow down and assess the long-term impacts of increased drilling, fracking and other enhanced oil and gas recovery processes on California's communities, environment and health, and the BLM should do its part by withholding these leases."

The land sale is part of a widespread push by the Obama administration's BLM to sell off vast amounts of public land for toxic hydraulic fracturing procedures and shale oil development.

Further

Chanting "Kill the Bill, Not Us," over a hundred activists, many in wheelchairs, halted the only hearing on the Graham-Cassidy anti-health-care bill and were met with a response only the current cretins in power could conjure up: They were removed and arrested by police, Chairman Orrin Hatch told them to "shut up," and Bill Cassidy literally yawned through the turmoil. Democrat Ron Wyden called the spectacle "an abomination,” which aptly sums up the state of the Republic.